“We have strengths that compliment each other’s weaknesses,” Dave says. “Where he often struggles, I frequently excel,” adds Jet.

Friends urged Jet and Dave to apply for THE AMAZING RACE CANADA; they are the life of the party, no matter where they go. They met in high school when Jet started dating one of Dave’s friends, and when Jet and the girl parted, the two remained friends. Since then the inseparable pair have travelled the world together and have been through thick and thin as best buddies.

Physically they are a lethal combination; Jet is a two-time Men’s National Physique Champion, while Dave is a National Champion in Cheerleading. They also never miss an opportunity to joke around and know that they can be perceived as goofy – which they plan to use to their advantage. “In addition to our charm and good looks, we’re both actually quite intelligent,” says Jet. “We are as smart, if not smarter than the dolphin,” adds Dave.

Of The Race the two agree, “We are excited to get to explore our great country that most Canadians never get the chance to see.”

Motto: “We’re like icebergs...10% above water, 90% below!”

How will they plan to win the Race: “Be ourselves and win...in a strategic manner.”

Number one roadblock as team: “Getting along when things don’t go our way, we’re both control freaks.”

From singing a tune to dancing a jig, Jet and Dave say all the fun they had on 'The Amazing Race Canada' paid off.

By Sheri Block 9/10/2013 2:21:37 PM

Watching Jet and Dave do a jig in Newfoundland as they got “screeched in” or sing “I's the b'y” as they rode the shores of Nova Scotia certainly made the team entertaining to watch on “The Amazing Race Canada,” but the best friends from London, Ont., say it also contributed to them making it as far as they did.

“I think it’s clear to see we had the most amount of fun. We don’t generally take ourselves too seriously so I think watching it back, you see us having fun and I think that helped with our success,” Dave tells CTV.ca, following the team’s elimination.

“A little less neurotic, a little less stressed out and a little more fun, I think it honestly helped us get further in the ‘Race.’ There’s nothing to be gained by brow beating your teammate and getting down and yelling at each other.”

Jet agrees and says even when they were at their worst (he cites building an igloo in Iqaluit as an example), they didn’t have the “mental breakdowns” they say a lot of other teams succumbed to.

“We were able to make fun of ourselves and move forward. We handled stress a lot differently than the other teams, which was obviously a huge asset and if it was entertaining for the country, then that’s a bonus.”

But no amount of fun could save the team on the most recent leg in St. John’s, Nfld., when Dave struggled to earn $50 while busking on the street corner – a delay which cost them the “Race.”

Jet says when they found out the Roadblock challenge involved entertaining the crowd, they were very confident they could pull it off with little difficultly.

“And then when I saw Celina skipping by with her hoop and her ribbon I thought, ‘Uh-oh.’ We could be in trouble here. And by trouble I mean we might not get first place.”

The trouble continued when Jody and Tim Sr. returned from the challenge, which meant Jet and Dave were in last place.

“My heart just sank,” says Jet. "It was upsetting but it was also confusing because we couldn’t see any of the other buskers from our vantage point so we had no idea what was going on or what wasn’t going on and it wasn’t until I saw the episode that I kind of understood the hardships David was facing.”

“It sucked,” adds Dave. “I could not get Newfoundlanders to part with their hard-earned cash and devil sticks aren’t as impressive as they used to be when I was five.”

But even though the team was eliminated, the best friends say they’re overwhelmed by all the support they have received.

“I know we surprised people because I get messages all the time, like ‘I hated you in week one’ and then slowly we kind of grew on them,” says Dave.

As a police officer in London, Jet says he has also run into a few fans while on the job.

“I had to give one girl a red light ticket after a vehicle collision and she thought this was the greatest thing ever and said, while laughing, that she was going to frame this ticket and I said, ‘That’s pretty expensive. You might want to pay it.’ It made her day . . . the response has been generally very, very positive.”

Next week the winner of “The Amazing Race Canada” will be crowned and Jet says even though they underestimated all the teams that made it to the final three, each one has something going for them.

“Tim and Tim have luck on their side. Jody and Cory have a very strong bond and are getting momentum at the right time and Celina and Vanessa, who I have historically not been supportive of, especially showed me when I watched the Iqaluit episode . . . they are physically a lot weaker but mentally a lot stronger,” says Jet.

“I have to give them all the respect in the world and looking back, clearly all three teams deserved to be there as much as us or anyone.”

The London pals eliminated from The Amazing Race Canada say they have no regrets, but were coy on their future.

Jet Black and Dave Schram took time for a conference call with media Tuesday, the day after the hit CTV reality show saw them eliminated, leaving two tiny sisters, two brothers including one with prosthetic legs and a father-son team with dad suffering from Parkinson’s Disease still competing.

So did the experience of criss-crossing Canada and the territories have a life-changing impact?

“I honestly don’t think there was a whole lot of personal growth,” said Black, a London police constable.

“No doubt we were blessed to have that opportunity, but we are who we are. Outside and in the race, what you see is what you get.”

Said Schram, a marketing executive: “I would agree with Blackie on that. (The experience) reiterated for us that we are good friends. But I’ll always remember the Yukon, which was almost life-altering for me in a way. I am grateful for the opportunity but at no point was there any epiphany.“

The pair were eliminated in the second-last segment of the show. The finale is next Monday at 8 p.m.

The best friends spent Monday’s leg of the race in Newfoundland, sprinting from one picturesque point to another kissing cod and drinking screech, running into a snag when they had to repeat a Newfoundland fish tale, slipping to third place, before they were busted when they were unable to raise $50 busking.

The Mitic brothers remain in first place, sisters Vanessa Morgan and Celina Mziray are second and the father-son team of Tim and Tim Hague are third.

The sisters’ performance has been a surprise for Black who described as “pip-squeaks” compared to his own physical size and strength

“I was not their (the girls’) biggest supporter at the start, but I have changed my tune watching the show the last few weeks . . . I have no idea how those pip-squeak girls got through a lot of the challenges, but they absolutely deserve to be there as much as anyone,” said Black, although he was critical of the father-son team who twice were “saved” in the show when they should have been eliminated.

Will Londoners see the two on any other television shows? What does the future hold?

“We would love to do something else . . . just the response and support we got from Canadians across the country was just mind-blowing,” said Schram.

Said Black with a tease in his voice: “We certainly don’t shy away from the spotlight, but another show in the works? I’ll never tell . dot . dot . dot.”

Getting a decent quote from Jet Black and Dave Schram is harder than completing the busking challenge on The Amazing Race Canada.

And if you believe that, I’ve got a tractor-trailer full of lentils to sell you. (Hidden stuffies included!)

The BFFS, strong favourites to win the reality-TV competition, were eliminated this week, after Schram didn’t pull in the dollar bills busking on the streets of St. John’s, Nfld.

“I didn’t think it was a joke, cheer challenge. They had seven instruments that we could take and I thought that was the challenge,” the 28-year-old says during a conference call on Tuesday. (Schram is a former national cheerleading champ.) “Looking back on it, is there stuff I could have done differently? Yeah, but I definitely didn’t realize it at the time.”

The always-on duo is working on getting over their elimination. After all, they lost out on the grand prize of $250,000, two Corvettes and a year’s worth of executive first-class travel on Air Canada. Hardly chump change, and they had a one-in-four chance of taking it home. It helps that people have reacted to them so positively, they say, and they know why. (Humble-brag without the humble coming right up.)

“After seeing the show, we are the most entertaining. Definitely, we had the most fun,” Schram says. “Even when the chips were down, we still kept it together and never turned on each other.”

“How can you not love us?” Black adds (laughingly, it should be noted).

And that sense of fun — or rather FUN, if I’m going to try to capture ‘The Dudes’ outsized personalities – is what they’re taking from their time on the race. No life-changing epiphanies, no promises to be better men, no new life goals, just memories of the awesome time they shared.

“We are who we are both outside the race and inside the race,” says Black, a police officer in London, Ont. “What you see is what you get. It didn’t really change us.”

The pair knows that their time on the series, which had them racing across Canada from coast to coast to coast, was an opportunity of a lifetime and they’re grateful for it. But it wasn’t all shots of screech and kissing cod.

“Something the home audience doesn’t realize is the lack of sleep and regular food intake,” says Black. “That was probably the hardest thing I had to adapt to. For example, leaving Iqaluit, we had to take three flights to get back. Hal and Jo had to take four to get to Regina. So even before we were digging into the lentil bins, we had been up for 24 hours and we hadn’t eaten anything aside from airport food. So that was probably a factor in some meltdowns.”

Black, a two-time national fitness model champion with the ginormous muscles to prove it, estimates that half his backpack was stuffed with food, protein powder and weight-gainer. And his four-to-five time a week gym routine was cut down to three or four sessions in hotel gyms.

“But fret not! I’ve put the weight back on. I don’t’ want anyone to panic. You should see how tight my jeans are now.”

That physicality didn’t save them in the end, though. “Pipsqueak” (Black’s description, not mine) sisters Vanessa Morgan and Celina Mziray vaulted into second place on this week’s leg of the race. The sisters are chronically at the back of the pack.

“I became really good friends with them. I was the only person who thought they earned a spot (in the finals),” Schram says. “It’s easier for people to dismiss them than to give them the credit I think they deserve . . .It’s not about being first, it’s about not being last. And they did that. They beat us on that day, which sucks for us, but I wish them well.”

Watching the episodes, rather than running the race beside the sisters, has given Black a new appreciation for how hard the siblings pushed themselves.

“In Iqaluit, when they were physically spent, they kept pushing forward . . . that did impress me.”

There are also no hard feelings for Mziray’s busking “performance” of hula hooping in yoga pants and a tight T-shirt. “I would have sold my first-born child for a $20 bill at that time,” Schram says. “She was a hot little tamale, so she got money.”

And just because their time on their time on The Amazing Race Canada has come to an end, don’t be surprised if you see the pair back on the small screen in the future.

“We are currently in talks with all of the major networks. They are all wooing us,” Schram says.